"IT’S A LOT LIKE RUNNING A GAME…" I had just asked Judd about how the student teaching was going—judd_sonofbert offered this reply in 1998. It was right after our Legend of the Five Rings game, and Judd seemed winded. Judd loved the game, loved his character; I loved the character too. But Judd seemed disengaged. I was concerned. We strolled out to his car.

Judd's response struck me; Judd is strong at GMing, and I was puzzled as to why he was drained. "A lot like running a game," he repeated. But if they were alike, then why was he drained? Judd's good at GMing. I didn't get it. "GMing and teaching are simmilar. Really simmilar."

Judd, like many people, repeats himself in uncomfortable circumstances—when he's not sure if he can take a conversation to another level or when he doesn't want to get into the thick of something. By his face, I wasn't sure which of these it was. He seemed mixed. I didn't press him on this issue for a long while. 

It was a short interplay, but was fixed in my mind. That conversation rattled and rang around in my head for years. I know our brief exchange in front of my rust-beaten volvo enabled my pursuit of teaching as a vocation.

Four years later, in my own student teaching, I discovered how right Judd was. And I discovered the underlying movements beneath that mixed expression.

So yes, geeks—if you're liking gaming and considering a career—if you're asking, "how can I possibly do this GM thing for a living?"—if you can run a good game, there’s a decent chance you can be a good teacher. Let me warn you though. First, about half of us give up within three years and do something else. Every school day, about a thousand teachers leave the profession. Second, the game system for this Teaching, the RPG is baroque and crunchy... REALLY baroque... and REALLY crunchy. It’s the crunchiest system you’ve ever played in. Rolemaster has got nothing on this. And you’re running five sessions a day for 20-40 players a pop. There's a lot of prep for each game, and you have to keep track of everyone's experience points. And then, much like gaming, almost no one outside of the craft really understands what it entails—and just about everyone has some preconceived notion of it.

In this blog, I examine parallels I have discovered between good teaching and good gaming—and occasionally their inverse. Sometimes I offer tangential anecdotes about one or the other, but ultimately, my vision is in the overlap between the two, and how they inform each other.

Now for a bit of pointy-headed theory. 

Lev Vygotsky was this amazing Russian guy who lived about a hundred years ago. Because he was Russian, most people in the West don’t know him that well. The Cold War kept his ideas away from us; "damn commies" and all that. But his ideas were as important as, say, Piaget or Dewey (you know, the guy important enough for the Dewey Decimal System?). Vygotsky died at 37 of tuberculosis—leaving a lot of his work incomplete—and even more interesting in that way, as good open-ended ideas leave room for development and fresh thoughts.

The essence of one of his more important theories is how we learn from play. He submits that through play, we learn abstraction, we learn social norms, we learn to imagine. Children might begin with wanting to ride a horse—and then they use a stick as a facsimile for the horse (Lev calls this a pivot, but don't sweat the lingo). Eventually, we develop an ability where we need a device or toy to pivot our minds around—we can imagine the horse and riding... and then we apply this technique to all sorts of things. Anything. Everything. Through play, we construct knowledge, skills, attitudes.

Play is serious business. It’s meaningful. It’s critical to our identity and development.

Some of us never stop the play.

Have you ever met someone who didn't play as a child? Theres a This American Life story about such a kid. I also have had such a student who grew up in a rather similar situation as the young man in this story. The young person I worked with has some serious issues and is identified to receive special services due to being Emotionally Disturbed. By my observations, group work was alien to my student—which is unusual because most students like structured group work. Some days this student would be fine—even outsanding. And other days, this student wouldn't participate at all. 

Play is so crucial to us; I think, like sleep, we take play for granted. Well, in general anyway. Some of us take our play really seriously.